SOFTWARE FREEDOM DAY

http://softwarefreedomday.org/

Think Quest International competetion by ORACLE Education Foundation

http://www.thinkquest.org/competition/

Schedule: The competition is tentatively scheduled to run from August 2010 to April 2011.

The ThinkQuest International Competition challenges students to solve a real-world problem by applying their critical thinking, communication, and technology skills. Participants may enroll in the following competition events: ThinkQuest Projects, Digital Media, and Application Development.

In the ThinkQuest Projects event, participants will:

• Use ThinkQuest Projects, a hosted environment where students produce web-based learning projects, to create their entry.
• Define the problem they intend to solve and create a ThinkQuest Project that presents their solution and the process they followed to develop their solution.

Prior experience with ThinkQuest Projects is not required.

In the ThinkQuest Digital Media event, participants will:

• Use digital media tools to produce a blog/journal, website, animation, public service announcement, photo essay, video, or some combination of these items.
• Define the problem they intend to solve and produce an entry that presents their solution and the process followed to develop their solution.

Prior experience with digital media development is not required.

In the Application Development event, participants will:

• Develop a web-based application using their choice of programming language(s), software, and development environment.
• Define the problem they intend to solve, produce an application that elegantly solves that problem for users, and present the process they followed to develop their solution.

Although helpful, prior experience with application development is not required.

* All entries must be submitted in English.

Age Divisions:

ThinkQuest Projects and Digital Media Events

• 19 and under
• 16 and under
• 12 and under

Application Development Event

• 22 and under
• 19 and under
• 16 and under

The age of the oldest student on a team, as of the entry submission deadline, will determine the age division in which a team competes. There is no minimum age requirement to compete in the competition.

Teams:

Teams may include 1-6 students and must have one coach.

Who can participate?

	ThinkQuest Projects	Digital Media	Application Development
Students	Must be enrolled as a student at an eligible school during the competition.	Must be enrolled as a student at an eligible educational institution during the competition.	Must be enrolled as a student at an eligible educational institution during the competition. Young professionals are not eligible to participate.
Coaches	Must be at least age 21, or the age of legal majority in their country/state of residence, whichever is older, on the day of the entry submission deadline. Must be an employee of an eligible school. Students are not allowed to act as coaches for this event.	Must be at least age 21, or the age of legal majority in their country/state of residence, whichever is older, on the day of the entry submission deadline. Must be an employee, or student of an eligible educational institution.	Must be at least age 21, or the age of legal majority in their country/state of residence, whichever is older, on the day of the entry submission deadline. Must be an employee, or student of an eligible educational institution.

The Foundation reserves the right to invite students and coaches associated with its partners to participate in the competition.

• An "eligible school" is an accredited school that is owned or operated by a government or local school board, or an accredited, nonprofit, private school that is tax-exempt under U.S. Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3), or the non-U.S. equivalent of a Section 501(c)(3) school.
• An "eligible educational institution" is an accredited school, college or university that is owned or operated by a government or local school board, or an accredited, nonprofit, private school that is tax-exempt under U.S. Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3), or the non-U.S. equivalent of a Section 501(c)(3) school.

How will entries be judged?

Judges will evaluate entries for critical thinking, communication, and technology skills as noted in the Competition Evaluation Guidelines.

What are the prizes?

• All teams that submit a completed entry will be eligible to receive a Certificate of Participation.
• 1st and 2nd place teams in each age division for each event will receive a trip to ThinkQuest Live for themselves, the team coach, and one parent or adult chaperone per student. ThinkQuest Live is a 5-day event that OEF will host in the San Francisco Bay Area. It includes educational activities, social events, sightseeing excursions, and the elegant and magical ThinkQuest Awards Dinner.
• Additionally, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place teams in each age division for each event will receive a new laptop for each team member.
• Finally, 1st place teams in each age division for each event will receive a USD $5,000 donation for the school or organization that their coach represents.

Resources:

Resources to help students be successful in the competition will be made available upon the launch of the competition. Additional information, such as the Competition Rules and steps for enrollment and entry submission will also be provided.

Google Summer of Codes 2010

Hi all,
Google is accepting applications from students those who want to participate in google summer of codes 2010 ... I came across this notification today only (announced on 29th march) , applications will be accepted till 9 th April ... bt even if late .. people who really want to code for open source projects ... create your profile... n they will be listing around 152 organizations .. choose any of them as per your areas of interest ..review the projects /modules they are working on ..... go through the mailing lists ..subscribe to it .... contact with mentors .. .. give your proposals .... discuss with them .
Even if not as part of google summer of code .. you can go thru this list.. go thru the projects .. look at the wide areas ..n start coding
http://code.google.com/soc/
http://socghop.appspot.com/

http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/program/accepted_orgs/google/gsoc2010

.... a good way to start n learn ...

Enlivening Start ...

13th Feb 2010

3:30 pm J205
An enlivening start to our OSUM chapter with 100+ enthusiasts who turned up for our first event ... it all begin with
Introduction to Our OSUM Workgroup ..its benefits and our roles by Gaurav Tondon.
All about Open Source from Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman to the FOSS culture today .. how can we be part of it as a workgroup ....a spur for us by Vikram Singh Baghel.
Why Linux ? Linux as a robust + flexible platform for developers ...Open Source alternatives by Stuti Khare and Aditya Jain....
Followed by a very explanatory Live Demonstration of GNU/LINUX (Kubuntu 9.10) installation on SUN's Virtual Box by Alfan T P & Anant Khaitan ... which ended up as a workshop as students actually installed it on their laptops and got the jest of SUN's Virtual Box .... learned all the steps of linux installation , partitioning, desktop environments , security , directory structure + the concepts of virtual machines .. all of which could be explained in a limited time span.
The best part about this event was.. our participants were not limited to CS and IT , but students from MCA , Bioinformatics , Electrical, Electronics & Civil were also part of it ..and after event many students came upto us for actual linux installation and further explanation of virtual box as a good choice for learning new OS .

We seek your suggestions for further improvement ... your expectations from us.. your participation to get more into developers cult and what you seek in y(our) future events ...

Our First Meetup

6th Feb 2010 , 4:00 PM
Venue : CC OAT
Finally we took our first step towards gathering like minded students for an official start of our OSUM workgroup. First of all ,we made ourselves acquainted with 'What is OSUM community all about?' 'How can we use its resources, developers groups, events and webinars?' and 'How Sun Microsystems will support us?'.

We decided the structure of our club by taking up the responsibilities .

We discussed over our motives , 'How we will work together to accomplish our targets?' i.e meetup--->learn--->develop--->contribute for the open source
and side by side spread the words about FOSS, organize workshops and grow our workgroup.

We scheduled our first event focusing on introduction to OSUM. Why open source? Alternatives to commercial software and a guide to GNU/Linux installation.

Overall our first session was great to start with , felt the zeal of participation among our members who came up with practical ideas to be followed.

We are looking forward for you to join us , implement your thoughts ,suggest better ways and most important "share" your knowledge so that we can grow together .


URL for the global OSUM community : http://osum.sun.com
MANIT OSUM WORKGROUP : http://osum.sun.com/group/manit
Email : osum.manit@gmail.com


P.S : Further Queries and Suggestions are welcome.